Jiraiya's Apprentice
by Time's fatal
Summary: NarutoXSuperman. Sort of crackfic, but I tried not to write it that way. Oh, and no Naruto, but there's Jiraiya.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Superman belongs to DC Comics.

A/N: There isn't much plot, so it'll be mercifully short.

Lara looked fearfully over her shoulder at the screams and prevailing chaos outside as she held tightly to her peacefully sleeping infant son. _Too soon, _she mourned. _Much too soon. But this is the only way now._

Jor-El stood up from where he was kneeling, done with the reconfigurations on the mechanism. He looked to his wife and gave a short nod, confirming that he was succesful in recalibrating the point of destination. Though they may have once toyed with the idea of sending the entirety of their race to the Phantom Zone to wait out the cataclysm to come, sending a baby alone there was wholly unacceptable.

"Where?" she asked urgently. "Show me where."

After the merest hesitation, he turned to the controls and proceeded to project an image of the dimension, the world that Kal-El will soon call home. What she saw appalled her.

"Jor-El!" she exclaimed in horror. "You cannot be serious! You're not sending our baby to such a violent, _brutal _world! Find another!"

"We don't have time," he insisted. "I'm sorry, my love, I know it's my fault for calculating incorrectly the time we have left—" he grimaced in guilt, "—but this is the best, the _only_ thing we could do right now. We must have faith."

She searched his face intently, seeing his stoic facade crack for a moment, and was ashamed. Her husband was shouldering the burden of an entire people to save all this time, and found he could only save but one.

"I do," she assured him, laying her head against his chest with their son cradled between them. "Everything will be well, I know it."

The structure shivered ominously, debris falling around them and cracks fissuring the walls.

"We must hurry," he said, and turned to work the controls once again. Lara hastened towards the dais with Kal-El. Brushing a kiss on his forehead, she laid him down and backed away.

Jor-El watched sombrely. "You are the living legacy of Krypton, my son," he said to the unsuspecting infant solemnly. "Be a guiding light to the world. Do us proud."

He activated the portal, and father and mother watched it envelop their son in a flash of light that was gone as soon as it appeared, leaving them childless.

A cry broke from Lara, and before she could crumple to the ground, Jor-El was there holding her in a tight embrace.

"Forgive me Lara," he murmured, "no parent should part from their child in such a way. I can still activate the portal one last time and send you with him."

"No," she said instantly, returning his embrace just as fiercely. "My place is with you, my love. Always."

Sharing one last kiss, they were soon engulfed in the destruction of their world.

XXX

A blaze of light erupted in the middle of the ricefield, sending the dogs baying and the birds to flutter skyward. A middle-aged couple went out to bravely investigate the phenomena, and found a lone infant with a glowing crystal by his side...


	2. Chapter 2

XXX

"This is just great! Bad enough to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, now I nearly get stepped on by one of its unholy denizens! I'm bright orange, how could anyone miss me?" the creature griped, long tongue flickering like a whip that made the offender hastily back a few steps.

"Wha...wha...? You're a...a...are you..."

"Am I _what_?" it said irritably, bulbous golden eyes boring holes at the hapless youth, oozing belligerence from every pore.

"...lost?" the other ventured after a long fraught pause, upon which the apparently ill-tempered, venomousamphibian hopped forward a few steps, then leapt up to smack his chest, invading his personal space with extreme aggression. "_Look at me!_ Do I _look _like I belong in these backwoods?"

Eyeball to eyeball under its protuberant glare, Hoshi blinked, wondering what his mother would say was the polite thing to do in this situation, and decided that (_venomous remember?_) an apology was probably warranted.

Marshalling his courage, he slowly cupped his hands, and gently dislodged it from his face, bringing it slowly back down the ground. Still crouching, he proceeded to kowtow apologetically. "I'm very sorry for nearly stepping on you; I wasn't looking where I was going, and you're really small–er, I wasn't looking where I was going...I meant no offense Mister, um, Amphibian sir," he said, still kneeling, earning himself a guffaw.

"Well, you're a polite little mite ain't ya?" it–no, Hoshi was sure it was a he–cackled in a fickle turnaround of his earlier mood. "Don't call me sir, I ain't that old yet. Call me Gamakichi, or Boss."

"My name is Tanaka Hoshi, it's nice to meet you," he bowed again. "Pardon me, but are you a summons?" he asked tentatively.

Gamakichi the talking frog puffed up alarmingly. "That's right! I'm Gamakichi of the toad clan, one of the strongest summonses you'll ever find!" He suddenly deflated. "Er, could you tell me how far I am from the nearest village?"

"Not far," the ten-year-old assured him, "I can bring you there if you want."

"Helpful too," Gamakichi chuckled. "Oi! Jiraiya! I found us a guide!" Hoshi looked around, expecting another frog–_toad–_to pop up.

Instead, an old man with wild white hair dropped down from the nearest tree. Before he could object, 'Jiraiya' proceeded to perform a loud, shameless and _utterly bizarre _introduction that set his ears ringing and the disturbed wildlife fleeing away from the spot–though never mind them, Hoshi was more worried about his own safety in the company of the crazy man.

"Er," he smiled uneasily, beginning to doubt the wisdom of being so helpful, "that's nice, why don't I just-"

"Kid, you're a gift from the heavens itself," the crazy man proclaimed. "You can't imagine how long I've been wandering aimlessly, searching for civilization!"

Hoshi relaxed a little. Maybe he wasn't crazy so much as eccentric. Isolation was said to do strange things to a person.

"If you would please follow me then," he nodded as he got up, then went on ahead.

Gamakichi and Jiraiya gave each other telling looks, as they followed the walking enigma before them.

XXX

"Please, you've been far too generous already," Jiraiya waved away the offer of more sake from his smiling hosts. Hoshi sat to the side unobtrusively, jumping up now and then to help his mother set the dishes or fetch something for his father. "It's more than enough that you let me stay here for a couple of days, I couldn't impose on you for more."

"Nonsense, we don't get much guests out here, it's a welcome change," Joji-san rumbled, crinkly lines fanning out at the edges of his eyes.

"Please Jiraiya-san, don't think about it too much, it's a pleasure to have you here truly," Rika-san softly interjected. A look out the window gave her a start. "Oh! Is it that late already? Hoshi, time for bed."

"I know. Good night everyone." Giving his mother and father a hug, he smiled shyly at their guest before going upstairs.

Eyes sharpening, Jiraiya leant forward, adopting the thoughtful expression of someone with a concern to raise, keeping his body language open and reassuring-a trustworthy confidant.

"Forgive me for asking, but Hoshi...he's adopted isn't he?"

Rika smiled placidly as she poured another cup. "Yes, we were blessed to have found him."

"We can't deny it," Joji chortled. "He looks nothing like us after all."

It was very true. Any half-formed suspicions of Jiraiya that their mysterious guide's parents were once ninja vanished upon actually meeting them. They were good people, salt of the earth and all that, but one couldn't mistake them for anything more or less than the hard-working farmers they appeared.

Which Hoshi wasn't. His skin was too fair as if he never spent a full day out in the sun, and his hands were soft and free of calluses. With them he stood out like a pearl in a bed of gravel, as striking to look at as his parents were commonplace.

But that wasn't what set him apart from them, from anyone he'd ever met really, from the first.

"Were his birth parents ninja?"

The couple gave each other troubled looks. "We don't know, but...we believe they may be."

"I think I can safely say that your suspicions are correct."

They looked at him with some skepticism. "How can you be sure?"

Jiraiya briefly considered performing his mind-blowing introductory dance routine, before deciding he might have left it a little late already. "I'm a ninja," he declared after a thoughtful pause. "One of my abilities is to sense the chakra in a person's body. Some have enormous chakra within them, some have very little."

"And you sensed Hoshi's chakra and determined it as akin to a ninja's?"

"I can't sense Hoshi's chakra _at all_. To my chakra detecting senses, it's as if he doesn't exist. I wasn't even aware of his approach during our first meeting until I heard him talking to my, uh, pet." It was really disturbing now that he recalled it. It was the first time in a long while that somebody managed to sneak up on him. That would be an incredibly useful ability when it came to assassination–especially of ninjas. "He may have inherited a little known bloodline limit that allows him to hide his chakra completely."

"With your permission, I would like to test him."

Husband and wife shared another look that spoke volumes, before it firmed into determined expressions. "Perhaps it's for the best Jiraiya-san."

XXX


	3. Chapter 3

XXX

"Okay kid, what do you know about chakra?" their house guest looked at him expectantly.

"Um," the boy fidgeted nervously, then recited, "Chakra is a combination of spiritual and physical energy that circulates in a person's system like blood. One's chakra capacity varies from person to person, though there is said to be ways to increase it. Uh, ninja use it to power some of their techniques among other things...?" Hoshi trailed off, embarrassed at the inadequacy of his answer. Here was a real-life ninja before him, willing to teach him, and he was already showing himself to be a poor student.

Jiraiya meanwhile was gleeful. That a ten-year-old little boy hardly out of the farm managed to garner so much already spoke a great deal about the latter's acuity. He also recalled overhearing the boy mention something about summons, which a civilian usually would not know about. Why did he always manage to discover the hidden prodigies out there?

"Yep, that's a good grasp of it. That's not something usually taught inside the schoolroom though."

"I-I like to read in the library," Hoshi ducked his head shyly. How could he admit that he devoured any book that talked about ninjas and their heroic deeds, and wished secretly to become one?

Jiraiya scratched his head with a sigh. "Well I'm not really an academic teacher, so why don't we go straight for the nitty-gritty," he suggested. "Let's start with preliminary exercises." The kid stood at attention.

"I'm going to teach you how to access your chakra." Hoshi's eyes widened.

XXX

Jiraiya had high hopes considering that his current pupil was such a smart little grasshopper.

Yet something was wrong.

On the bright side, nothing has happened so far–no accidental explosions, razing of the forest, endangered animals, or panicking people anywhere.

On the other hand..._nothing _has_ happened. _After several hours of meditation, followed by numerous attempts by the boy to locate his body's chakra and channel it outwards, every try was met with epic failure.

Hoshi was trying his damndest. You could see the sheer effort he was putting into it that would drive a lesser man to tears. Even the most ignorant, knuckle-headed individual in the world would have succeeded in putting forth even the most miniscule amount of chakra by now through perseverance alone. And yet...

It was time to face the alarming if improbable truth that the boy _simply had no chakra to channel. _It was impossible, nonsensical, but here it was, staring him right in the face.

_How? _

Was he staring at an escaped specimen of Orochimaru's ghastly experiments? But that can't be right. Here the boy was, a living breathing person, when having the chakra ripped from him should have rendered him dead.

"Hoshi," he placed a hand on the boy's head, "that's enough now. I don't think anything is going to happen if we continue further with this."

The kid looked desperate at that. "But–"

"It's not your fault. Anybody else, and it would have worked. I assumed–er, that is–the general rule is that everybody has chakra, and so theoretically, anybody can channel chakra. It seems, however, you are the exception to the rule." He crouched down to the ten-year-old's level and stared him in the eye. "You can't channel what you don't have."

"I don't have chakra?" Hoshi said slowly, dread and disbelief warring on his face. "How can I not have chakra? I'm not dead!"

Jiraiya answered with a vigorous rubdown of his head. "Yep, you're a walking medical miracle. Weirder things have happened I guess. Hey kid, don't look like that, it's not the end of the world. So what if you can't channel chakra? For all the good it does most people they may as well have none too."

"But–I wanted to be a ninja..."

"Pah, being a ninja is overrated really," the older man scoffed. "It's too much work and often little glory. If you want to get the moolah and the girls why don't you be an actor, or a singer...or a writer?" He struck up a gallant pose, head cocked to catch a non-existent breeze or perhaps a stray ray of sunshine.

"I myself have made many fine contributions to literature acclaimed all the world over." He winked. "You're a handsome, personable lad with a clever mind. Trust me, you'll have a bright future wherever you go."

Hoshi shook his head vehemently. "I don't care about money or recognition or any of that. I wanted _to help people_ by being a ninja." Here he bowed dejectedly, a faint sigh almost not heard from him.

"_Are you crying?"_ said Jiraiya in horror-stricken tones. He was just trying to solve a puzzle, not _break_ the kid.

_Ugh. _He never learned the proper way of handling weeping individuals, as Tsunade's oft painful reminders have taught him. He proved it now by waving his arms helplessly and then patting the boy on the back with too much force.

"I'm not crying!" Hoshi swore, bent double by Jiraiya's 'comforting'. "I'm not! (_koff koff_) You can stop now Jiraiya-san!" The pounding stopped, although a hand still hovered over his back as if to continue at the slightest sniffle. "I'm just...disappointed, that's all. I wanted to (_koff_), make a difference in the world, and I thought being a ninja would do it. I mean, they–you–have helped a lot of people, right?"

"Oh. Well, of course I have! Have you forgotten, I'm the great, the legendary, the _heroic_–Jiraiya the Toad Hermit! Genin recount my deeds at the academy, chunin aspire to be taken as my protégé, jounin look to me as the pinnacle they wish to surpass. Girls swoon, and evildoers beware when I'm near! I'm a ninja among ninja!" Again he struck a noble pose, straining to impress, hoping to wipe the woebegone look off the boy's face–

–to no avail. He sighed. "But that's, you know, _me. _Not everyone can be as awesome as I am. Anyway, ninja _might_ have helped a lot of people...but ninja have done a lot of terrible things too. There's a reason why some people look at ninja with distrust, you know? Besides, I stand by what I said. You can still help people by being something else. Why, as a writer, you can reach more people with your words than anything you can do as a ninja in a lifetime..." He brightened as if struck with inspiration. "If you want, you can be my apprentice."

"Apprentice?"

"...How would you like to travel the world, see the sights, experience new things? And learn the art of writing from a master?"

"You mean, you're asking me, _a kid_, to leave home and just go off with a practical–and apparently irresponsible–stranger, for who knows how long?" Hoshi said uncertainly.

"Why not? If you don't think writing's your calling, the world offers a whole host of choices. What do you say?"

...Absolutely nothing it appears as the ten-year-old blinked at him dazedly, mouth opening and closing like a stupefied fish. Really, you'd think he asked him to bound off a cliff or something as crazily unexpected...Well yes, now that he thought about it–

"–Okay, maybe that was a bit out of the blue–"

"You think!"

"So let's see, hmm...why don't you discuss it with your folks today first? Take all the time you need–"

"Aren't you leaving early tomorrow?"

"–to come to a decision tonight. Remember, this is a one-time deal only, I doubt you'd get another awesome chance to be apprenticed to someone as amazing as me..._Ahem_, _no_ pressure though..."

XXX


	4. Chapter 4

Jiraiya had the prudence (or the cowardice) to retire early and let him have a moment with his parents. Withdrawn as he was when he came home this afternoon, they knew something was weighing on his mind.

"Hoshi, is there anything wrong?" his mother worriedly asked as soon as he sat them down. His father looked dead tired, yet he sprawled comfortably on his favorite chair, attentive and unshakably solid. Both of them did, and he felt some of his nervousness abate in their reassuring presence.

"Jiraiya-san offered to bring me with him on his travels as his apprentice," he said abruptly, deciding not to mince words. "He thinks I could be a writer...and...and I don't know what I should choose to do." He looked at his parents pleadingly. "Should I go with him or not? What do you think I should do?"

"I think...you should do...what _you_ want to do, not what we want you to," his mother said slowly. "Hoshi...your father and I were never under any illusion that you would stay here all your life and work the farm with us. You are a very hard worker, but this isn't your calling. We knew that. That's why we were happy to let Jiraiya-san stay here a while. Maybe he could offer you something you couldn't find here."

"Maybe you could pursue your dream to be a ninja." His father smiled at his startled look. "It's all you ever played when you were small before you decided you've grown out of such games."

"Jiraiya-san said I _can't _be a ninja," he muttered shame-facedly.

"When has somebody saying _'you can't'_ have ever stopped you," his father said wryly, "even when that somebody was his own parent," he gave him a pointed look.

He flushed sheepishly at that. But his parents were right. He wasn't the rebellious type, but when he sets himself to do something, he was as immovable as a mountain and as inexorable as a rushing river...or wait, no, that was a confusing mix of metaphors. _Anyhow,_ he meant to do his best to become a ninja-and a writer also, because Jiraiya-san was right, words _were _powerful and all-reaching. He wanted to help the people he would come across, as well as people that he would never meet in person.

"I think - I think I'll do it. I'm taking him up on his offer."

His mother came to hug him, perhaps a little too tightly. Letting go, she looked a little weepy, but she smiled at him. "If you're going to be a writer, better practice. Write home as often as you can."

"Hoshi-" his parents exchanged another one of those speaking glances that only lifelong partners can decipher, "there's something we must tell you, about how we found you-"

XXX


End file.
